


Battle lost

by CrookedCat



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Angst, One Shot, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 04:43:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7494231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrookedCat/pseuds/CrookedCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taking place after 'X-men First Class'. Charles want's to reach a book on a high bookshelf but there are things in the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Battle lost

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to write some angst and just channel Charles's feelings.
> 
> English is not my first language.

What caused all of this was a book. It wasn’t even a very special book, it was a regular dictionary. It was on the top shelf and Charles was in the floor in his wheelchair when all the misery suddenly caught up to him. Of course he’d cried earlier, when he first learned the consequences of the bullet, when he saw Moira’s teary face, the first night at the mansion when he first felt that this was his new reality. But he’d decided to get it together, he didn’t had time or the power to deal with it right now so he had buried himself in work. It went fairly well, until that night when he needed the dictionary. He’d been reading everything about magnetism he could get hold on (a certain someone had released a certain Emma Frost from custody) when he’d actually came across a word he didn’t know what it meant. 

Out of old habit, the professor just turned his wheelchair around (that wasn’t the habit of course, but he’d slowly been getting used to the vehicle being an extended part of himself) and rolled to the second bookshelf on his right. He looked up at the furniture and spotted the dictionary on the highest shelf, way out of his reach. He took a shaky breath and with his exhale it seemed like all his power, all his dreams and willpower got sucked out. And then he couldn’t inhale because his chest didn’t function, it just hurt like somebody had put him in a vice and pressed and pressed until his ribs felt like they would crack. A whimper whine escaped his lips and he looked up at the book (that bloody book) with almost begging eyes. Because it was then he realized for sure that he would never be able to stand up again. No matter how much he would try, how much be would beg or how angry he would get, he would never ever be able to stretch out his legs and put weigh on them and use them in the way they were supposed to. And he felt so sorry for him self that he didn’t thought it was possible. He’d had his share of miseries before, when his father died and then his mother, and living with his stepfather and stepbrother had been hell. The difference was that, that even though he was a very bright kid, he had never truly understood the aftermath of those traumas. Back then, all he could do was live in the now, even thought he have had to dealt with it later.

But now he was getting a grip on it. He understood that this would affect him forever: it was nothing that was going to go away with time. His face started to wrinkle and his mouth opened without any sound coming out of it. He couldn’t bear to look at the dictionary anymore and his head sunk lower and lower and his whole (upper) body was shaking with the struggle of breathing and the sadness. His back hurt when he fell slowly down on the floor, head first. There, with his chin pressed to the floor and his legs in a mess, he finally let out a big cry and inhaled with lungs that felt like they were burning and big tears dripped from his eyes along his nose and were then ultimately absorbed by the carpet.  
“Oh God, no, no, no, no, no, no” Charles didn’t even recognise his own voice, and he had no idea how he even could make those noises: his chest was burning and his throat felt like it was made of stone. But somehow he continued on some sort of hyperventilation breathing, basically because he was in such a dark place he wasn’t in control of his body. There were no words that would comfort him, nothing anyone could say. There was nothing he could do and the hopelessness of the whole situation lay on top of him, weighing more than a ton. He tried to pull his legs up under his body to reach foster position but then he realized he couldn’t and it made him cry even harder. 

He was crippled, handicapped. A (as some people might say) freak. He’d been a freak all along but now the transformation was almost complete. The last touch would be if something destroyed his face. Charles Xavier, a mutant future the humans never wanted, a future he himself almost didn’t want anymore. He was just so confused and he asked why? Why did he have to pull up with this? How come he was the one who had to suffer when all he had been trying to do was the right thing? How come he was the only who would never get to run on the warm grass in the summers? Or climb a mountain? Or just stand up, in a line or at the side walk or whatever!

He was locked at his awkward position on the floor, not noticing the pain from his back. The sound that came from his throat from deep inside his chest sounded ugly, almost as ugly as he felt right now, his face wet and mushy and with legs that wouldn’t function. He just wanted to stay in this position forever, alone with his misery. Everything was coming back to him, all the things he regretted: how he was unsure his mother knew he loved her before she died, not taking the time to go out and live life instead of just sitting inside, studying. Even little things, like that time he snapped of Raven or that he never got to apologise to Moira, occupied his mind. His thought floated to his handicap and the wheelchair he hated that he had begun to almost feel comfortable with. He hated that he wouldn’t be able to go anywhere he wanted anymore and not be able to drive and maybe even take a train. And his “sex life” alone was something to cry about. He hadn’t even dared to try to get it up, because he knew that even if it did he wouldn’t feel it. And that hurt him almost even more than the knowledge that he possibly never was going to have any children of his own. Not that it was something he had planned, he didn’t even had anyone to have children with, but just the knowledge that it was almost impossible and that he would probably feel worse about it as he grew older made him almost numb.

Charles finally managed to take a great breath and he actually felt how could start and restrain himself and get things together if he wanted to. But he didn’t, he wanted to bury himself in self pity, and if someone had suggested insanity he would have seriously considered it. He would welcome anything that could take him away from the pain and the present, he wanted to just skip time and come back another day when the pain wasn’t so unbearable. And also, deep in his heart he felt an egoistic burning desire for everyone on the planet to know exactly what he was going through, to feel what he felt. It wasn’t his fault all of this, why should he have to carry it all by himself? And when he started thinking about blame one clear face came to his mind.  
“Erik” he whispered and started to make hiccup like sobs. “Erik. Erik. Erik” Even though he knew Erik was possibly the man responsible for his condition (even though neither him nor Moira had been aiming at him) he for some reason he couldn’t blame his friend. God, he just wanted him back, here, by his side. If he was, Charles loss wouldn’t seem so great. And he wanted Raven back too, he haven’t realized how much he missed her until she was gone and he felt guilt because he had not treated her the way she’d earned. And at this, his weakest moment, he felt like he’d let everybody down, mostly himself. And he actually doubted anything would ever be ok again.

 

Charles’s world was just a mess of orange and brown, the room as he saw it through the water on his eyelashes. But suddenly something blue broke his sight and he almost jumped when he suddenly felt a big paw on his shoulder.  
“Professor? Are you all right? Are you hurt?” Hank’s (slightly changed) voice was suddenly close to Charles ears and his eyes flashed wide open, just as his mind. His angst attack was over almost as soon as it had begun. He thought the main reason was shame, or maybe he’d just simply run out of things to cry about. Now he tried desperately to sit up and he felt like his whole upper body was crawling with ants, and one of his feet had tangled itself in the wheelchair.  
“Well, this doesn’t make me seem more pathetic” Charles thought with bitter irony and with Hank’s help he got back up into that godforsaken metal piece. His body felt weak and he struggled to maintain a proper composure. When he had calmed down he’d felt the presence of Alex and Sean right outside the door, they were probably so chocked by the scene that they didn’t thought about the fact that no one could sneak up on Professor Xavier. Charles tried to wipe away the worst of the tears but stopped when he saw that his whole sleeve became completely drenched in different fluids and he turned his head away in disgust.  
“Thank you Hank, I appreciate it” he said in an unpredictable steady and monotone voice, fixating his eyes on the window without seeing through it.  
“Are you sure, professor? Could I-?”  
“Please, just leave” Charles almost immediately regretted the harshness of his voice but he couldn’t bear to have any audience right now, it almost made him tear up again just of sheer embarrassment. He heard that soft “thump, thump” as his student turned around and paused for a moment before he closed the door after him. Charles exhaled and sunk against the back of his wheelchair.  
“I just have to accept it” he thought for himself, even though his darker side protested but he pushed it away. “There’s nothing else I can do and I have a job now, I have to get this academy up and running” 

Charles watched the grey clouds sail over the sky for a while before he turned his wheelchair back to his worktable, catching up where he’d stopped. Then he suddenly remembered and turned his head to his right. The dictionary was still on the highest shelf.


End file.
